19 February 2004

Culture Ingestion

A. Cohen is in a play at the Greenway Court Theatre in H-Wood, but I decided I didn't want to go. I caught a run-thru of Earnest at CPP last night and I am going to the opening tomorrow. Plus I am supposed to see a Neil Simon show on Saturday and the new Gotanda show on Sunday, so I don't want to be all theatred out on Sunday, so I thought it best to spend another night in. To be honest I was going to catch The Dreamers down the street, but by the time I looked at the clock it was already 9pm and by then I was feeling lazy. I did send my Oscar-party e-vites, though.

At any rate, I had another culturally productive night. I watched Kurosawa's Yojimbo: the Bodyguard on my roommate's gigantic television set. It's such a pleasure that tv. Kurosawa is a badass. He must've invented Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino borrows from Kurosawa so much it's almost as bad as Sofia Coppola and Wong Kar-Wai. I heard this story about how Nia Vardalos' new script Connie and Carla do L.A. is basically a remake of Some Like It Hot, but Vardalos is saying it's based on her life. Whatever. Anway, Yojimbo was very cool. I recommend to all. Much better than that David Lynch piece of shit I watched last night.

After Yojimbo I read Pterodactyls by Nicky Silver. I'm on a kick. I have 2 more of his plays to read. I find I like to be bombarded with ideas from one person over a short period of time. It's more interesting to see someone's play in the larger context of the rest of their work. I seem to do this by reading a whole bunch of their stuff at once. Pterodactyls is searing, beautiful, and of course hysterically funny. Silver's plays all seem to have at least 1 gay man (usually 2), siblings, a lot of monologues, a lot of witty banter, and basically the same character structures. It is all very black humor, too. That kind of shit always appeals to me. Love it. My collaborator and friend Aaron C tends to be bored by the kind of sick theatre I get really excited about, which is a shame... but anyway, here's a bit of Pterodactyls:

"That was Mr. Levie. There's a problem with the rabbit pâté. For the cocktail hour--it seems all the rabbits had cervical cancer and the pâté is contaminated."